June 17, 2013

The Boer people emerged from the Trekboers of the Cape frontier from the late 1600s & throughout the 1700s yet there appears to be a common misconception / erroneous assertion or pronouncement that the Boers got started during the Great Trek of the early to mid 19th cent. This assertion appears to be made by those who have a vested interest in denying the distinct ethnicity of the Boer people from the bulk of the so called Afrikaners. During the era of the Great Trek there was in fact not one monolithic Caucasian Afrikaans speaking group within the Cape. There was a bifurcation which occurred just a few decades after the initial establishment of the settlement by the VOC at the Cape when the poorest members of the society were forced to trek away after constant exasperation with the corrupt VOC administration. This nomadic Trekboer colony was the true origin of the Boer Nation. Not the Great Trek.

The folks in the western Cape region were often known as the Cape Dutch [ named by trekking Trekboers who were moving inland ] & whose heartland was in & around Cape Town but found up to Paarl & Stellenbosch. The Cape Dutch were pro Colonial with strong links to Europe who were loyal to the Colonial power & could not understand or relate to the Boers' desire for independence & self determination.

The proto Afrikaans speaking folks of the northern & eastern Cape frontier were originally called Trekboers [ named after their trekking & nomadic lifestyle as pastoralists throughout the 1700s ] - a term that was soon shortened to Boer: were anti-colonial as well as fiercely independent & had cut all ties to Europe becoming self sufficient living as nomads in the harsh environment of the Cape frontier. Thus by the time the Great Trek had commenced: the Boer people had existed as a distinct contiguous people on the Cape frontier [ away from the Cape Dutch of the western Cape region ] for at least 150 years with their own customs & dialect. The Boers had already had their first overt freedom struggle in 1795 when they declared their first Boer Republics on the Cape frontier at Swellendam & Graaff-Reinet during a revolt against the VOC. During the 1700s when numerous other new German immigrants came to the Cape: many of them settled directly onto the Cape frontier thus further shaping a distinct origin of the fledgling Boer population to that of the Cape Dutch population.

The Afrikaner Broederbond was a semi-secret organization of Afrikaans speakers during the 20th cent which was modeled on Free Masonry that controlled just about anything of importance in South Africa. This organization played a strong role in subverting the long running struggle of Boer self determination & preventing the Boer Republics from being restored. The following are some excerpts further outlining the control they exerted.

Quote: [ The Broederbond ("Band of Brothers"), which is supposed to have been founded as an anti-British instrument in World War I, probably numbers about 4 000 members --- nobody knows for sure. Broderbonders include an astonishing percentage of teachers and Dutch Reformed ministers, almost certainly a majority of the present cabinet, and most particularly Dr. Verwoerd, who became Prime Minister 18 months ago after Strijdom's death. ]

From: Page 37. Life magazine April 1960.

[ books.google.ca/books?id=Kk8EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA32&lpg=PA32&dq ]

Quote: [ You certainly know that our organization, a mixture of Afrikaner nationalism and free masonry, was in danger of petering out in the early 1920s... ]

The above quote / admission is from former Afrikaner Broederbond Chairman [ from the early 1930s ] L J Du Plessis within his notable 1960 letter of resignation.

Prime Minister J B M Hertzog stated in November 1935 that: there was no doubt that the secret Broederbond was nothing more than the HNP / the Purified National Party of D F Malan operating secretly underground, and the HNP is nothing more than the secret Afrikaner Broederbond operating in public.

Quote: [ Afrikaans society and South Africa in general was dominated by a secret Afrikaans organization called the "Afrikaner Broederbond " (AB) or in English the "Brother Bond" since 1948, when the NP first came to power right up until the ANC came to power in 1994.

This secret organization which was founded by a group of die hard Afrikaners in 1918, worked much like the Freemasons "help each other" system and has over the years shaped and planned the destiny of South Africa long before these plans became public. The Broederbond ensured that its members, which at its height only totaled just over 12 000, were strategically placed in the civil service (virtually ever prime minister and cabinet member were AB men) and in the private sector so that any decisions it took would always translate into public policy. It was thus a very powerful organization, but with the advent of ANC rule it has of course shrunk in power dramatically.

With the split in the NP in 1982, a fierce battle was waged for control of the Broederbond between the pro-reformists and the anti-reformists. By carefully staging the final showdown in the Cape, PW Botha managed to clinch the struggle when Treurnicht could not get down to the meeting in time to argue his case. The Broederbond remained supportive of the NP. ]

From: Victory or Violence: The Story of the AWB of South Africa. Arthur Kemp. Chapter 3.

The dialect of the Boers was classified as Eastern Border Afrikaans by historians as that was the location where their particular dialect had developed during the 1700s... on the northern & eastern Cape frontier where the Boer people emerged from the nomadic Trekboers. This dialect was later taken to the region where the various Boer Republics were established [ & beyond ] during the era of the Great Trek. Also later taken to areas now known as Angola & Namibia during the Thirstland Trek. The following are quoted excerpts noting this distinct dialect.

Taken from the Afrikaans Language Museum website.

The Afrikaans dialect of the Boers is in fact different to the Afrikaans dialect of the Capetonians thus is distinct to that as spoken by the Cape Dutch population.

Quote: [ Our language is Boeraans (a German speaks German, a Dutchman, speaks Dutch French speaks French and so on. How to talk a Boer then Afrikaans ??????? an Afrikaner speaks Afrikaans as the colored nation in the Cape. ]

Quote: [ From this, three main dialects emerged, Cape Afrikaans, Orange River Afrikaans and Eastern Border Afrikaans. The Cape dialect is mostly infused with the language spoken by the Malay slaves who worked in the Cape and spoke a form of broken Portuguese, the Orange River dialect developed with the influence of Koi languages and dialects developed in the Namakwaland and Griqualand West regions and the Eastern Border Afrikaans evolved from the settlers who moved East towards Natal from the Cape. ]

From: History Of The Afrikaans Language In South Africa at: [ nc.essortment.com/historyafrikaan_rqrs.htm ]

Quote: [ Towards the end of the nineteenth century, however, a political party known as the Afrikaner Bond had been started in the Western Cape. Its publication Die Afrikaner Patriot made a small and shaky beginning, read mainly by the less well-to-do rural readers whose home language was not Dutch but Afrikaans, sneeringly referred to as the patterjots by Dutch speakers.

Afrikaans was not a systematic language. Dialects differed widely — at the beginning of the century, for example, six dialects existed in the Cape province alone. Furthermore, Afrikaans had an unfavourable image for wealthy Boers. It was associated with both colour and class; the middle class regarded it as a kombuistaal — a ‘kitchen language’ to be used when addressing servants or farm labourers. Generally, the poorer the community, the more its Afrikaans differed from the ‘purer’ version spoken in the Western Cape. For example, the language spoken by the poorer peasants in Namaqualand caused concern:

In (this area) one finds the weakest Afrikaans. Ignored by Church and State, these people have been in constant contact with Griquas and Hottentots, who speak a low semi-barbaric form of Afrikaans. We must make a distinction between civilized Afrikaans and the language of the street, playground and servants.

Afrikaner intellectuals worked very hard to ‘clean up’ Afrikaans —they appropriated the language developed by the ‘coloured’ lower classes and claimed it as their own, ‘white’ language. They removed black and Malay as well as English influences; for example, many southern Nguni words, which had entered the dialect in the Eastern Cape, were replaced by Dutch words in the new dictionaries devised by teachers and academics, to reinforce the idea that Afrikaans was respectable and ‘white’.

On the Rand, where the dominant language of an industrial society was English, working-class Afrikaans was riddled with English-based words. For example, the Afrikaans Garment Workers Union magazine Klerewerker (which promoted the use of Afrikaans) adapted many words derived from English — they used words like ‘werkendeklas’, instead of ‘arbeidersklas’. They also included creative new uses of words, like brandsiek, which was used to describe a ‘scab’, a person who broke a strike by working. But these were lost as they arose out of working-class experiences, and were excluded from official recognition by the middle-class compilers of Afrikaans dictionaries, and magazine and book editors. ] End of quote.

The excerpt notes some detail concerning the difference between the dialects as spoken in the Western Cape [ Cape Dutch dialect ] & in the Eastern Cape [ Boer dialect ] but also notes that some of those differences were lost to the standardization process of the early 20th cent when the Cape Dutch in effect began to impose a standardized version.

Quote: [ Mr. Kruger is a speech-maker of no mean ability. His addresses in the Volksraad are filled with good reasoning, homely similes, biblical quotations, and convincing argument. He speaks without preparation, indulges in no flights of oratory, but uses the simple, plain language that is easily understood by the burgher as well as the statesman. All his speeches are delivered in the Boer "taal," a dialect which bears the same relation to the Dutch language as "low" German does to "high" German. Generally the dialect is used by the Boers in speaking only, the pure Dutch being used in correspondence and official state papers. ]

Quote: [ Those who stayed behind in the Cape became known amongst the independence minded Boers as the "Cape Dutch" - symbolizing their attachment to Europe. This group loyally supported any European colonial government, and vehemently opposed all attempts by the fledgling Boer population to break ties with the colonial governments. This group stood in strong opposition to the fledgling Boer population and differed with them on all levels - starting with their approach to colonialism and extending all the way through even to language. It is not widely known for example that there are for example marked accent and pronunciation differences between the Boers and the "Cape Dutch". ]

From : The Boers of Southern Africa. Arthur Kemp.

The Boers that emerged on African soil abandoned the various languages their ancestors spoke [ ie: High Dutch / Low German / French / Frankonish / Provencal / German / Portuguese etc. ] & adopted as well as helped create the emerging Afrikaans language that developed on African soil to the point of creating their own dialect.